Doors Open From Both Sides
by Aggravate.the.Axe
Summary: Seven years post-movie. Hela, daughter of Loki and Keeper of the Dead, has discovered the Tesseract's mate in the Himalaya. SHIELD rushes to stop the all-powerful goddess from bending our reality into something warped and isolated in an attempt to avenge her father. The Avengers may need help this time, and help may be ...the intern. Slight Steve/OC, platonic Banner/OC. R&R please!


Hell, where she came from, was bitterly freezing.

And this place was cold. Too cold, up in these mountains. Where she came from, mountains did not grow colder as you gained altitude. She had made the journey alone, at least this part of it, and had let the Baron and his men scout ahead. To be completely candid, she had not needed them for this part of the ordeal-the hissing blue shard around her neck told her exactly where to go. It longed to be with its mate.

As her horse trotted up the easy cliffside, its hooves seared the ground and left it snowless and scorch-marked. The woman upon it was hard to see in the weak moonlight, but her silhouette was impressive enough; an unnaturally tall horse, and on him, an unnaturally tall woman, wearing a great stag-horned helmet. When she'd gone tearing through the village, they had all cowered before her.

They _would._

"There," she said suddenly, pulling on the reigns and stopping the animal on the very edge of a cliff. It was not exceptionally tall, but very steep.

The black figure sat tall and straight, looking down into the valley with intense apathy as she watched her minions lay waste to the village below. And the Baron thought his forces were to be reckoned with. Her horse gave a nervous whinnie, watching the fire spread through the village, but leaned forward and cooed comfortingly in his twitching ear. Her Sykdom were efficient, and it would all be over soon.

For her.

For boy tailing her, it seemed as if it would never end. He had lost people he cared about- people he saw as invincible. Death wasn't something his family feared, but how could he remain calm when death had been brought in such an... such an unfair, ungodly way? Those... things down there smelled wrong, like something that had been wet for a very long time, and they had too many... knuckles. Their necks were too long. He couldn't tell if they were wolves or hogs or just men that had been hit with a car.

The horse was too fast, and the boy's journey was made even more perilous by the fact that he could not see through his constant tears. Things were blurry-not just because of the tears, but he had also bumped his head very badly-but he could tell that lady and her animal had been there by the heat its fiery hooves left behind. He didn't know why he was following her. He couldn't find his mother, and she was the one that had brought those monsters... couldn't she help him? Couldn't anyone help him?

"Mam!" he squealed, nearing the horned woman. Her horse whinnied and bucked its head in his direction, its cool, black eyes staring at the little boy. She looked down too, her teeth bared in confusion. It took her a moment of searching in the darkness to notice the tiny human fumbling his way toward her.

"What manner of being is this?" she asked herself. Her tone was soft, but the bite of it was venomous. "A human fledgling..."

She expected him to fall down and die right then. His little legs looked as though they were about to give out anyway, and he had blood trickling down his forehead. But to her astonishment, he ran right up to her and began to pull at her cloak.

"Mam! Mam!"

The woman was pulled by him so roughly that she felt unsteady on her horse. The shard hanging from her neck dislodged itself from her cleavage and hung between her and the boy, shining dully. The boy watched the swirling blue within it and slowly, his grasp on her cloak loosened. She growled, clutching the reigns tighter and saying through her teeth, "_Take it._"

He looked from her smouldering green eyes to the calming blue of her necklace and reached his hand out for it, but hesitantly. He barely heard the screams and crashes from the village he had left behind, entranced by the object. Childish instinct took over, and he closed both his hands around it, cupping it.

Immediately, he pulled them back again and began to shriek. The skin on his hands had begun to melt away, leaving only the tissue, which also began to slip off, like tender meat. The woman gave a loud, high-pitched laugh and backed away from the cliff's edge, turning from the human child. Lucky little babe-he had not suffered as much as the others!

As her steed trotted up the roughly-beaten path, the whimpering behind them subsided and then disappeared altogether, but she barely took notice. Further on the path, she could hear the jingling of the armor the Baron's men wore. The shard's glow seemed to augment, lighting up the smirk that now curved half of her face.

The woman weaved between the rows of red-and-white clad and then dismounted, patting her horse's rump one last time before beginning to ascend the crooked stone steps the rest of the way up the crag. The long pathway she had been taking ended in a jutting, rectangular rock which housed a cave. And there in the cave lay the treasure she had come to find.

The doorway was cleared of soldiers for her, and she ducked into the rock cave. It was tidy, everything in perfect squares. The walls were covered in exquisite carvings which had once been painted royally-now, the rich colors were chipping and fading. In the center of the room was an altar and something that looked like a pulpit. The entire cave was well-lit, all things considered.

She took off her helmet, which was clearly made of bones in the new light. Long black locks tumbled down her back as she approached the Baron, who stood waiting for her.

"Wolfgang," she purred, stepping closer to him with a seductive glint in her eye.

He smiled. "My Lady."

"Your men track well."

"They would do anything you wish, My Lady." The woman looked over her shoulder at the men who stood at either side of the doorway, their red and white hoods shading their faces. She did not need to see their dead eyes to know that they were not here for her. She turned back.

"And where is _it_?"

The Baron tensed. "Well... that is where my men do not deserve praise..."

Her jaw tightened, or at least the half of it that could. "You haven't found it? Haven't you tried deciphering these paintings? The carvings?"

"They do not know the language, My Lady."

"That is no excuse!" Her sudden outburst rang through the mountain top,and he threw his arms above his head.

"I'm sorry!"

Her shoulders slowly relaxed, and after throwing him a final glare, she knelt to read what was written on the front of the pulpit. It took her longer than it should have to read it and run her fingers over it. All was silent except for the ringing in the Baron's ears. She had never been so silent around him, and it felt unnatural. It wasn't just silence. Something hung there.

Finally, she stood and croaked, "It's here."

The Baron nodded. "Yes, My Lady, I'm very sure it is."

She half-turned to him, the half of her face that still looked like a woman's. "No, Baron. It's here." She slapped one hand down on the top of the pulpit. "Right. Here."

He stared at her hand, for he did not dare to look at her face. "Well, then, we will get it out as soon as- we will get it out now. How does Her Ladyship suppose it should be extracted?"

She turned fully to him, in all of her Asgardian splendor, and looked him straight in the eye. The chilling half of her, the one he didn't want to look at, faced him full on now. Before he could adjust, three things happened at the same time: he felt something horrible in his abdomen-a sort of bubbling, rising... _bursting _feeling; Her Ladyship seized him with her skeletal hand, throwing him against the altar; and blood washed against the front of her dress. His blood.

When the light was gone from his eyes, she took her soaked hand and dragged it across the top of the pulpit, leaving five long, red streaks. The guards behind her stood at the ready with their guns, and yet they did not use them.

A noise of pure glee came out of her in a breath as the pulpit began to fold delicately away, making way for something that was being pushed from the depths of the stone. The Cube rose from its hiding place, glittering red. The energy that pulsed inside of it reached for her, as if it wanted its mother. Almost like that fledgling she had left to die.

She reached out, cupping it in her hands, one of which was gloved and the other of which did not need a glove. She stood straighter and brought the Cube to her chest, against her necklace. The burn began to subside.

Finally, she seemed to notice that the guards were standing behind her, ready to shoot her into oblivion. She turned and smiled widely. "Put those down."

"You... you killed him!"

"I sacrificed him," she whispered, "it is completely different."

Still, they kept their weapons aimed at her.

"Put those _down_." They hesitated. "_Down_." Stiffly, they lowered them the rest of the way. "Very good," she purred, and looked back at the red cube in her hand. She petted it, and it issued faint red smoke. "You go and tell the men left that they have a _new _leader..."

"But-"

She looked up sharply, her jaw tightening, her green eyes penetrating them. "I know that is where you would rather be, all of you. On your knees, looking up at someone!" She held the Cube up to her face and gestured to it. "I have raised God's very treasure from stone! I have given your people so much... why, I have mothered a whole army without being bedded." She looked at the two. "I could be your Virgin!"

Their guns clattered to the floor and then rushed out into the snow, shouting for the others. The woman smiled to herself at the thought of being their Holy Virgin, nudging the Baron's body out of her sight with the toe of her boot.

She had no idea Earth would be so rich in rewards.


End file.
